Öckerö gymnasium

Every single second

Yesterday, we left the Azores and I was very excited for changing our watches. Port side had the watch 12-4 before and now we are switching to 4-8. Even though we need to wake up 03:30 in the middle of the night, I love watching the sunrise and see how the darkness slowly goes away. Crossing the Atlantic, is better than I ever could imagen.

 

My day started with a Port side’s first 4-8 night watch. The weather was warm and the moon lighted up the whole boat. I’ve gotten so used to total darkness at night, that I for a moment couldn’t figure out which navigation lights that was on. Our first officer Jesper decided that we should practice some sailing manoeuvre. The time just flew away and after one hour, it was fika-time. Warm sandwiches with blueberry soup was served. When we were done, our watch leader Mauritz had a lesson about wind. It was very interesting!

Our watch ended at 8 and I went to sleep. At 11:50, it was lunch. We had green pea soup with new baked bread. As everyone knows, you can’t eat pea soup without pancakes, so that’s why we got pancakes with ice cream some hours later.

After the pancakes, it was time for watch. I was lookout, which means that I’m searching for other ships and items in the sea that can be a possible danger for our ship. After 30 minutes, I switch position and got to steer. It’s amazing to feel how the ship moves as you steer. This time, Gunilla didn’t sail fast at all. This made it a little harder to steer, because the ship moves so slow and it takes time to change course. When it was about one hour left on the watch, we started the engine and motor sailed. I don’t like to start the engine, mostly because of I sleep next to the machine room and can hear it through the wall. And of course, it quite boring that we don’t have enough wind to only sail. Jesper said that we’re lucky with the weather. He said that it’s usually some days of really bad weather some part of the crossing over the Atlantic. I’ll hope the weather stays like this. Or well, it would be fun with better sailing wind.

In 10 days or so, we’re arriving at Portsmouth in England. I’m looking forward to it, but arriving to Portsmouth means that we’re soon coming home to Sweden and I don’t know if I’m ready to leave Gunilla quite yet. I miss my friends and family at home, but I also love it here. I guess I just need to enjoy every single second of this as much as I can.

Kind regards,

Malin Moqvist, Port side

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Öckerö seglande gymnasieskola
Björnhuvudsvägen 45
475 31 Öckerö

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